Efficacy of homeopathy medicines in treating ADHD

The debate about which system of medicine is the most effective for ADHD is an ongoing one and the jury is still out on it. The primary concern before parents is whether to go for standard pharmaceutical medication or explore alternative remedies for their ADHD child.Doctors who have been using homeopathy for ADHD have reported some success rate, but concrete evidence has been inadequate. Only a handful of studies are available to prove homeopathy’s efficacy though they’re noteworthy nonetheless.

For instance, a double blind, placebo-controlled research on 43 children with ADHD had made significant findings that homeopathic remedies can be quite successful in curing the disorder.In a study published in the British Homeopathic Journal in October 1997, kids with ADHD were given either a homeopathic treatment or a placebo for 10 days. Subsequently, parents or caregivers had to rate the children on the amount of ADHD behavior they exhibited. Those being administered homeopathic remedies displayed considerably less ADHD behavior than those who received placebos.

When these kids were examined in a follow-up two months after the completion of the study, 57 percent of the children showing improvement with homeopathy had continued to get better, even though they had discontinued the homeopathic medicines.About 24 percent of the kids had relapsed by the time of the follow-up; and the remaining 19 percent kept exhibiting positive results, but only as long as they were being administered the homeopathic medicines.

The conventional treatment for ADHD comprise stimulant medication, such as Ritalin or Cyler, or oral anti-hypertensives such as clonidine. Numerous studies testing Ritalin have found it to be effective in the short term. The question that then concerns parents and care givers is: how effective are homeopathic remedies compared to conventional drugs like Ritalin?

A research in Switzerland (Frei and Thurneysen, 2001) studied 115 children, comprising 92 boys and 23 girls, with an average age of 8.3 years and a diagnosis of ADHD. The kids were first administered an individually chosen homeopathic medicine. Children who did not improve sufficiently on homeopathy were then shifted to Ritalin and evaluated after 3 months. Following an average treatment time of 3.5 months, 75 percent of the kids showed a favorable response to homeopathy, exhibiting an improvement rating of 73 percent. Twenty-two percent of the children were treated with Ritalin and reached an improvement rating of 65 percent.

These kids were measured against the Conners Global Index (CGI), which is the most respected benchmark for assessing the degree of ADHD symptoms. The children who responded to the homeopathic medicine exhibited a 55-percent reduction of the CGI, while the children on Ritalin showed a 48-percent decline of the CGI.Three children didn’t respond to homeopathy or Ritalin, and one child left the study before completion. Based on these observations, the researchers reached the conclusion that homeopathic treatment was comparable in its advantages to Ritalin though homeopathic remedies enjoyed the benefit that they did not have the side effects that come with Ritalin.

This study is significant in showing how the holistic approach of homeopathy rates better than conventional medicine. For, 75 percent of the children with ADHD in this study improved from the “package of care” provided by homeopaths, which was a better rating than the “package of care” administered by conventional doctors.